Life in Hollywood, below-the-line

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Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Spring

(Photo by Deborah Fisher)

Monday morning, sunny and crisp on the second day of Spring. While hanging a damp bath towel on the sash-cord clothes line outside my apartment’s back door, I heard a most welcome sound; there amidst the usual sirens, car alarms -- and the hollow, booming thunder of a garbage truck making its rounds out in the street -- came the pure lilting tones of a Mockingbird greeting the dawn in full song. I stopped for a moment and listened to the bird's astonishing vocal acrobatics, which were such a stark contrast to the daily cackles and caws of the crows, Hollywood's dominant form of avian life. Those crows can be interesting to watch, but they don't do much to inspire one's soul.

But that Mockingbird? Pure magic.

Winter is gone, Spring has arrived, and life is good. The hillsides and houses surrounding the LA Basin will be going up in flames soon enough, but for the moment – this brief, sweet window before the Solar Hammer of Death comes down from above – LA is actually a pleasant place to be. The hills are as green as the suburban lawns below (lawns nourished by other people’s water...), while California poppies bloom all around the neighborhood front yards, creating splashes of a deep seductive orange that draws and holds the eye. Jasmine is everywhere these days, filling the air with a heavenly scent. Birds are chirping, bees are buzzing, and the women -- ah, those lovely SoCal women -- have shed their winter coats for an infinitely more appealing/revealing wardrobe.

Hey, youth may be a memory, but I’m not dead yet -- and this is indeed the season to feel very much alive.

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“Failure” being the subject of next Sunday’s post (and possibly beyond), I couldn’t help nodding at Rob Long’s description of the television industry as being “a business of failure” in last week’s Martini Shot commentary. The beauty of Long’s approach is that he never spares himself in these meditations – he readily admits to being a part of the problem even while describing the inevitability of us all becoming part of the eventual solution, willingly or not. There will be (and has been) much collateral damage as The Solution rolls through the Industry, crushing the careers of many beneath its cruel and heavy wheels. Whatever your craft, failing to adapt to the new realities might be the biggest failure of all.

But we can talk about failure on Sunday -- right now, I'm heading outside to enjoy this gorgeous golden Spring...

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About Me

Born and raised in a rural pocket of the San Francisco Bay Area, I graduated from UC Santa Cruz clutching a degree in Aesthetic Studies. Armed with this paper sword, boundless ignorance, and a vision of Hollywood heavily influenced by the movie “Shampoo” (and seriously, what guy didn’t want to be Warren Beatty back then?), I proceeded to march on Hollywood in the spirit of a young man seeking adventure, a living -- and if Lady Luck deigned to smile upon me, perhaps a small fortune. Adventure, I found. A living, I made, but although Lady Luck has thus far kept me safe from harm on the road-raging freeways and bullet-riddled streets of Los Angeles, that elusive fortune remains but a shiny mirage on the road ahead.
I'm now playing out the string on a thirty year career in set lighting, trying to hang on until the bitter end.